


Jo Grant, Assassin For Hire

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: 500 prompts, Alternate Universe, Awesome Jo Grant, Classic Who companions are awesome, Gen, Humor, Women Being Awesome, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl’s got to keep herself in platform boots and plastic daffodils, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jo Grant, Assassin For Hire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [500 Prompts Meme](http://lost-spook.livejournal.com/300554.html) – #258. Assassin For Hire (Jo Grant), from JohnAmendAll.
> 
> Frequent frivolous refs to death/murder etc.

Everybody always seemed to underestimate Jo Grant, but she didn’t really mind. It gave her the advantage, after all, and quite often it was the last thing they ever did.

*

“And what else can you do, my dear?” The aging pop idol accompanied his question with a leer and put his arm around the blonde girl standing beside him.

Jo Grant shrugged. “Oh, lots of things. You’d be surprised.”

“Oh?” he said, grinning as he edged in nearer.

Jo nodded. “Oh, yes,” she said, nodding. “I mean, I’m a dab hand with a sharpened knitting needle and you’d _never_ guess what I can do with the wool when I have to –”

He choked out as he fell to the floor, leaving Jo standing over him, holding the knitting needle.

“Or maybe you would,” she amended, with a quick, quirky grin. “Whoops. Sorry. Don’t worry, though – the end was poisoned, so you won’t be lying there for very long. It’s one of those rare, untraceable ones. What was it called again? I can’t remember, but you can find it up the Amazon. It’s great for completely baffling the coroner.”

Then she looked at the mess she’d made of her knitting needle and pulled a face. “Urgh.” But, she thought, it was _much_ better than that time she’d experimented with using a crochet hook.

*

“Nice boots,” said the unfortunately inconvenient heiress, flipping back long and immaculate brown hair as she spoke. “Groovy.”

Jo nodded. “Yes, fab, aren’t they? There’s just one problem, though.”

“What’s that?”

“These heels. They’re _lethal_.”

*

Jo never really had been all that good at cooking, she had to admit, as she surveyed the sponge with the sunken, gooey middle she’d just taken out of the oven.

She sighed. After all, it would be so much easier to finish off the officious local councillor if she could only bake him something nice with pink icing on the top (that might incidentally contain quite a lot of arsenic). She’d bought some sugared flowers specially and everything.

Now she was going to have to do that fiddly thing with the wiring and get him electrocuted in the bath. 

“I suppose I _could_ try rock cakes,” she mused aloud, but then again, she didn’t think she had any sultanas left and nobody ever liked rock cakes, anyway.

Jo screwed up her face in thought until it came to her. “Butterfly cakes,” she decided. “You can’t go wrong with butterfly cakes, can you?” 

*

“It’s, er, certainly a colourful CV,” said Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT’s commanding officer, eyeing Jo somewhat warily over the top of it as he conducted her interview. “If I may ask, Miss Grant, what prompted you to apply to join UNIT?”

Jo beamed across the desk at him. “Well, you see, it’s all very well going round bumping people off, but you can’t do that for always, can you? I mean, half the time, the people paying you are worse than the victims. So I thought it was about time I tried using my skills to help people. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“And so you got in touch with this uncle of yours –”

“Mmm-hmm. He said he was pretty sure _you_ could find a use for me. He thought Amnesty International might not be so keen.”

“No, probably not,” said the Brigadier. “We, er, might well be able to find something for you to do, I agree.”

“And I’m pretty good at making tea, too.”

An alarmed look crossed the Brigadier’s face.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Jo. “I almost never put strychnine in it. Mostly only milk and sugar.”

The Brigadier looked back, careful to remain unmoved. “No need for that, in any case, Miss Grant – Sergeant Benton’s in charge of the tea-making around here.”

She gave him a smile that made him wonder if the CV wasn’t some sort of elaborate joke. But if that was so, it wouldn’t have come marked TOP SECRET.

*

Soon after, the Brigadier led her into UNIT’s lab. He couldn’t help but feel that there was some sort of grand universal or poetic justice at work, too much so to refuse her offer – not that he had much of a choice, what with that bigwig uncle of hers. 

“Doctor,” he said. “This is Miss Grant. She’s your new assistant.”

*

The Brigadier waited patiently for the Doctor to finish his tirade. It took some time. A series of surreptitious glances at his watch informed him that it had been twenty-six and a half minutes with a thirty second pause for breath and then a further twenty-one minutes of insults, mostly aimed at bloodthirsty military nitwits.

“Doctor, I’m afraid I fail to see the problem.”

“You would,” the Doctor retorted with a glare, but he’d evidently exhausted the worst of his vocabulary for the moment.

“Doctor. The Master was – as usual, may I add – attempting to make a deal with a group of vicious aliens and take over the planet. He’d already murdered at least six people in the process, including two of my men.”

“She killed him!”

“As I said,” returned the Brigadier, with what might have been a smile. “I fail to see the problem.”

“With his own tie!” The Doctor gestured with his hands, presumably mimicking Jo’s actions in a manner that impressed the Brigadier into raising both eyebrows.

The Brigadier was sorely tempted to say, _aha, hoist by his own petard, then_ , but managed not to by a superhuman effort of will. “I’ll, er, have a stern word with her, Doctor.”

*

“So,” said Jo, with a heavy frown, “you _don’t_ want to me to kill evil megalomaniac aliens when they’re threatening to take over the world and hurt the Doctor?”

The Brigadier considered how to answer. “Well, Miss Grant, your methods are somewhat unorthodox.”

“But they do work, sir, and while I don’t mean to be rude, I can’t help but notice that bullets don’t seem to, not very often.”

“Somewhat unorthodox,” repeated the Brigadier with a stern cough. “However, I don’t have a problem with you taking out alien threats in those circumstances. Let’s just –”

“Try not to let the Doctor see?”

“Something like that,” agreed the Brigadier, and then felt guilty. “But, obviously, only in such a situation and only as the last resort. Is that clear? I do have to write reports, you know.”

Jo nodded earnestly. “Oh, absolutely. I promise I’ll be a good girl and won’t kill anyone you don’t want me to. It’ll be our little secret.”

“Miss Grant –!”

“No, really, Brigadier. I mean it.”

“You promise, then?”

She smiled. “Of course. I’ll have fun thinking up some things that are a bit less fatal for a change. I’m sure it won’t be all _that_ difficult, really. Don’t worry, sir.”

Good Lord, thought the Brigadier in alarm as he watched her go. He was going to have to put contingency measures in place. Always best to be prepared, he decided. He had a feeling Miss Grant would agree.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blonde Assassin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7630306) by [JohnAmendAll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll)




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